LET'S not mess about. Tricky is a man bigger than his music. He's a face, an image, a mask. It's far easier to compare him to writers than past musicians. Which, to his credit, implies that there are still traces of individuality.
   His stage and media persona borrows just as much from recent literary greats: from the likes of an Orwell and his nightmarish future - only with the Tricky Kid it's now; from the decrepit urban stench favoured by Hubert Selby Jr or Burroughs' heroin Hades - all people who immerse themselves in a fictionalised environment to such an extent that they snap or undergo a radical change. OrwelI moved more towards the centre (some say to the far right), Selby went through the smack machine... but what will become of Tricky? Knowing our luck, and judging by tonight's performance, he'll probably end up like Lou Reed: bitter and boring. 
    Playing in front of a haute couture carnival crowd which sees an endless parade of expensive trainers and flash haircuts, Tricky is on his home turf, he's playing to people who have probably yet to realise that his new album "Angels With Dirty Faces" is, in fact, a bag of old bollocks.
    Gone is the original edge, or even the "out-there" stylistics of "Nearly God", and what

BEN MYERS